#DF18 Developer Guide: If You’ve Built a Ton of Apps (But Not Many on Salesforce Yet)

Dreamforce has hundreds of sessions devoted to development. If you’re a developer who has worked with different frameworks and platforms but are new to building on the Salesforce Platform, we’ve got you covered. Here’s a list of developer sessions that might help you as you plan your sessions. Open up your Agenda Builder and bookmark away!

Tuesday

Identity 101: Design Patterns for Access Management
Tuesday September 25, 8:00 AM – 8:40 AM
Managing identities and access controls across many orgs, applications, and Identity Providers is a modern necessity, but also a daunting challenge. Join us as we dive into the use cases and demo how you can manage identities at scale, employing a mostly clicks-not-code approach. Learn how to build for multi-org architectures using SSO, Connected Apps, JIT Provisioning, and Login Discovery. You’ll come away with best practices and a sneak peak into upcoming features on the roadmap.

Route Your Triggers Like a Pro
Tuesday, September 25, 10:00 AM – 10:20 AM
Did you have a closer look at your trigger handlers recently? In many cases, platform events can encapsulate and orchestrate your business logic much cleaner than triggers and are easier to integrate with from outside of your org. Custom metadata types enable you to make your triggers and platform event handlers configurable for yourself and – caveat emptor – customizable and replaceable across namespaces. And what about this new Trigger Context Enum? Learn to route your business logic like a pro and to conduct the traffic in your org and/or packages in reliable, performant and – if you want to – configurable ways.

JavaScript Testing with the Lightning Testing Service
Tuesday, September 25, 12:30 PM – 12:50 PM
As the number and complexity of Lightning Components in your org grows, so does the risk of defects when you write them, and of breaking changes when you refactor them. Lightning Testing Service enables you to create JavaScript test suites to maintain a high standard of quality. Join us to learn how you can use Lightning Testing Service to evaluate the impact of code changes, improve the robustness of your JavaScript code, and gain confidence that your Lightning Components work as you expect.

Supercharge Lightning Apps with Base Components
Tuesday, September 25, 5:00 PM – 5:20 PM
Are you getting started with Lightning Component development? Join us to learn how to easily use base components to create apps that look great and work seamlessly within Lightning Experience. We’ll explore several examples that solve real-life use cases with a minimal amount of code. You will walk away ready to experiment and build on your own.

Wednesday

Build & Deploy Heroku Apps Using Docker
Wednesday, September 26, 10:00 AM – 10:20 AM
Are you wondering how to build and deploy Docker images to Heroku? This session gives you a brief introduction to Docker, followed by an interactive demo of deploying Docker images to Heroku. You’ll leave with a solid understanding of how to build and deploy Heroku applications using Docker.

Crafting Flexible APIs in Apex Using Custom Metadata
Wednesday, September 26, 12:30 PM – 12:50 PM
Integrations need to evolve as an application’s data needs grow. Don’t get stuck rewriting your code to handle new data. Instead, future proof your integration by using Custom Metadata. A properly architected and configurable API can greatly reduce maintenance costs and allow admins to own the configuration of a custom API integration. Join us to learn how to create a custom and configurable APEX REST API that accepts a JSON payload from a webhook, and uses Custom Metadata and Entity Definitions to dynamically map data to Salesforce Objects.

My Boss Told Me to Build a Lightning Component. Now What?
Wednesday, September 26, 3:15 PM – 3:35 PM
You’ve decided (or were voluntold) to build your first Lightning Component. Now what? Have a seat for a crash course in building Lightning Components. Using a live coding demonstration, you will see a Lightning Component come together from scratch. From markup to JavaScript to CSS, we’ll break down each step along the path to your first component. You’ll leave the session feeling empowered to take on new adventures in your own Lightning journey.

Quickstart Templates with the Salesforce CLI
Wednesday, September 26, 5:00 PM – 5:20 PM
When building a new offline application using Salesforce Mobile SDK, many developers have to copy and paste codes to set up the same base functionality. To solve this problem, we created a Salesforce Command Line Interface plugin to generate a simple offline application from a template, which saved us quite a bit of time and effort. In this session, you will learn how you can build your own CLI plugin to leverage templates to speed up your application development.

Thursday

Salesforce for Developers Keynote: Build the Future of Apps
Thursday, September 27, 1:00 PM – 2:00 PM
People now expect apps of the future; continuously improving, integrated, and smarter. As developers, you are more empowered than ever to build these apps. Join this developer keynote and be the first to see how the Salesforce Platform can help you build apps faster, integrate apps easily, and make apps smarter.

Avoiding Common Security Mistakes
Thursday, September 27, 2:30 PM – 2:50 PM
Cross-site scripting, SOQL injection, open redirect; even if you’ve heard of these security vulnerabilities, you might not know how they work. Join us as Salesforce security engineers explain how these common web application vulnerabilities manifest in your code and how to banish these flaws from your code for good.

Salesforce API Fundamentals
Thursday, September 27, 4:00 PM – 4:40 PM
APIs are a critically important aspect of interacting with data. But with so many ways to programmatically customize Salesforce, where do you start? This session is your guidepost to the world of Salesforce APIs. Join us as we step back and look at the landscape of core Salesforce APIs, from REST to Bulk to Metadata, and more. We’ll break down what they really are, when you should use them, and Salesforce’s roadmap for building even more innovative API frameworks to transform your business.

Build a ChatBot with Einstein Bots (2)
Thursday, September 27, 5:15 PM – 5:35 PM
Are your service agents spending too much time on simple, repetitive or routine customer requests? Join us to gain an understanding of Einstein Bots, related components, and how to build your own smart Chatbot, powered by CRM data, in a few easy steps. You’ll be able to build your own Virtual Agent ChatBot so your agents have time to work on more meaningful customer issues where human interaction is required.

Friday

3 Great Salesforce Open Source Projects You Need (2)
Friday, September 28, 9:30 AM – 9:50 AM
The Open Source Initiative (OSI) is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2018. The open source core team at Salesforce will be providing high-level insight into open source at the company. Join us for an overview of the top three open source projects that are built on top of our Lightning Platform that you can leverage in your day-to-day life. Be part of the phenomenal transformation to adopt and contribute to these projects. This is a great opportunity to find out more about these cool projects and be able to interact directly with core committers.

Get on the Bus, The Platform Events Bus!
Friday, September 28, 10:30 AM – 11:10 AM
Learn how you can build event-driven integrations with platform events that are low/no-code friendly and incredibly extensible. In this session we will build a simple microservice to integrate our sample Salesforce app with a third-party system on Heroku utilizing Salesforce Platform Events. We will then extend this integration using declarative tools like Process Builder and Flows to perform additional business logic with no extra code required. You will leave with a clear pattern for how to create, configure, and consume Platform Events, and will understand the benefits of designing integrations to be extensible by both developers and administrators.

Manipulate and Integrate Salesforce Data with Heroku Connect & Postgres
Friday, September 28, 12:00 PM – 12:20 PM
Heroku Connect provides bi-directional data synchronization and virtualization between Salesforce and Heroku Postgres. Mulesoft’s AnyPoint platform provides the tools, connectors, and runtime to enable robust integration of data in cloud apps, such as Salesforce, with a line of business and custom applications. In this session, we’ll discuss common usage patterns for integrating customer data in Salesforce with Heroku apps, and explain which use cases are better suited for Heroku Connect, Mulesoft, or the two in concert.

Remember, even if you can’t make it to Dreamforce in person, we’re putting sessions online soon after the event so keep an eye out for the recordings!